An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
A vision you can share with others — You must have a goal and be able to communicate it to others in aid of support and business growth. Developing my business in the UK or Spearmint now would not have been possible without the support of the teams I work/worked with or clients who retained me. You need to communicate well to develop momentum.
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jill Schmidt of Jill Schmidt|PR. Jill Schmidt|PR is a full-service public relations firm. Jill and her team have been in the media relations business for over 35 years with experience in a wide range of industry sectors including high-tech solutions, consumer electronics, food products, medical devices and general businesses of all kinds.
Focused on creating editorial stories, the team excels at getting our clients attention across the media spectrum. Based out of Chicago, the team has excellent contacts with local press including, TV, Print, Radio, Online and top bloggers.
National placements have ranged from The Today Show, The Rachael Ray Show and Good Housekeeping to The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Fast Company, The New York Times, TechCrunch, Mashable and virtually every other outlet relevant to client products.
All staff members are skilled in every facet of strategic public relations including strategy, positioning and messaging, tactical media and analyst execution, event management, and financial communications.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I think what fueled my drive and ambition is fairly typical: my parents, who were amazing people went from relative comfort to having the lights turned out when I was in my early teens. The trauma of this experience forced me to understand the importance of self-reliance and the value of money: what it is like to have, and not to have- at a very young age. I watched my mother return to work– a complete professional/life transition in her 40’s (and after she would return to college to earn a degree in her 50’s!) and following 7 years of bitter legal battles my father relaunch his career, successfully and give 110% to overcoming the seemingly insurmountable legal bills and other setbacks he experienced. There was no one as “glass half full” as my dad! When others would have simply closed shop, he carried on with no loss of self-respect or optimism. As an adolescent, it was painful to watch but it was formative in my belief that humans have the capacity to grow, overcome and learn from their struggles and set and achieve new goals. My Dad was my first and best coach. His unshakeable belief in my abilities, consistent encouragement and ability to ask questions that led me to discover the best way forward shaped who I am today.
Until I was 21 my passion was performing, not academics. I was accepted into of the most prestigious theatre/acting conservatory programs at a top university on audition alone. To be frank, I wasn’t prepared for the rigor or the competitive nature of the program and really crashed and burned while there. It was a humbling experience to accept that as much as my identity was as a performer (no one disputed my talent) the lifestyle didn’t align with values at that time. I transferred to Emerson college as a Communications major and had great success in sales, one of my side hustles for 3 years during college. After graduation, I decided to go into advertising sales. I tried the agency side in planning but the $12,000 they offered post grad just wasn’t going to cut it. One solid contact my parents had was a senior media director who at first said I would need to work AT LEAST two years in planning/buying before I was ready to make the transition. This was one of the first memories I have of someone, a man I trusted, saying “hang on”, “hold up”, “not so fast”, and me deciding I know what it takes and have what I need to try. Fearless! I convinced him to introduce me to a headhunter-who was super connected and he soft-peddled me to Larry Burstein then Publisher of NYMagazine. Fast forward 7 years later and I was the youngest ever (at the time), Advertising Director of Vanity Fair. This was when Tina Brown and Graydon Carter were Editor in Chief and every move we made was under immense scrutiny. That high profile experience was SOME learning curve, not without its personal hits and misses. I moved permanently to the UK to be with my British husband in 1993 and had a successful career in corporate media, founding my own company GoMedia Sales. In 2008, the market and media world were in upheaval as it largely moved to digital. This coincided with the personal decision to, after 15 years in London relocate our family to the US. I dabbled for a nano second in Real Estate, looked at other sales opportunities, but ended up right back in ad sales working for a one of my favorite mentors. For many reasons, it was clear after 25 years in sales, it was time to find my 2.0. Using the process, I use now with those looking to pivot I decided to formalize my experience as a coach. People have sought me out for wise counsel, direction, to help them fix their professional challenges all my life. I decided on an academic grounding at NYU and have been working as a coach ever since. In 2018 I founded Spearmint Coaching.
Two quotes I love regarding resiliency and perceived failure are from Winston Churchill:
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It’s the courage to continue that counts.”
“Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm”
No Founder I know has not experienced some form of failure in their lives. Your responsibility is to learn what you can from it; accept your contribution, forgive others for theirs and move on.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
How Spearmint came to be is super interesting. I never thought my business would be propelled by a surge of work with young professionals. I planned, prepped and marketed myself to serve senior leaders and CEOs, because in my previous roles, I understood their challenges and immensely admired the work of coaches like Marshall Goldsmith. But when I hung my shingle, my immediate network of friends, friends of friends and family asked if I could offer their college senior some career guidance, or their 23–24-year-old re-launch or transition successfully. I wandered in the halls of corporate HR for about 18 months, until realized this is where my focus should be. Working with young people is tremendously gratifying and that’s been the biggest surprise. I love it. If I had been mentally rigid and not read the tea leaves, I would have missed out on this.
My mentor at NYU once said to me, “you don’t find your coaching practice, it finds you.” And that is what happened.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I finished my Executive Coaching studies at NYU, (all full of knowledge and vigor!) the first people I reached out to were those who knew me as a sales leader and entrepreneur. I had a reputation in ad sales as a result oriented, somewhat intense, fixer and producer, yet I assumed that people would be able to see me in my new role as a career coach. A woman I had a good working relationship with said to me, “I just can’t see you in this.” The company she was working at used coaches all the time, but she couldn’t envision me as one. I thought I could just sell my way into my coaching practice like I did in ad sales. The lesson was that changing people’s perspective takes time, you need to be strategic and play the long game. It doesn’t happen overnite but it if you are committed it will happen. Ironically after founding Spearmint, I was retained by a leading digital media company for various leadership coaching engagements. They saw me as someone who (correctly!) got what they did and had the chops to help their team. My corporate work in outplacement is a direct result of patient commitment to long term goals.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
There have been so many people and I am so grateful for that! You are always going to have different mentors at different stages of your career. But, if I had to be grateful to those specifically, it would be my sisters. They have been my wisest advisors and safe harbor, always. Every founder needs some unconditional support. And my kids, as they launch their own careers have taught me so much- the best reverse mentors for tech issues! The turning point in my career was at 29 when Ron Galotti promoted me to Ad Director at Vanity Fair. As I was young and relatively less experienced than others in the same role, he experienced A LOT of pushback internally with the team (at the time it was around a 70 million dollar business) This opportunity made a lot of my future success possible. It was trial by fire and an MBA all in one. He simply said “ok Orner-y (Orner is my maiden name), don’t screw this up.” Lots of hands off support and learning!
According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
The stat I see most often on the VC side is only two or three out of every hundred pitches received at venture capital firms are from women. Do I think anything conscious is going on? I would assume some bias but IF you believe what you read VCs are LOOKING for woman owned and operated to support. But I think the future for female entrepreneurs is going to brighten considerably. I saw a post recently citing what has changed the venture capital industry more than any other factor is Amazon.com’s role. AWS has helped lower the cost of starting a company by 90%.
On AWS and with open source you can achieve amazing results for $500,000. If someone is a developer, they can launch a company for $50,000.
I believe these price points are pushing entrepreneurs to start at a much younger age. You see that everywhere! Think about it — if you only need to risk $250,000 as an investor (or $50,000 across 5 people) to get an entrepreneur started then why wouldn’t you back younger teams [in addition to more experienced ones.]
So why does this relate to empowering woman to start companies?
If women can get funded to run startups at 22–25 years old, they can gain real traction as entrepreneurs before having to navigate the tricky years of balancing family demands with running a company. If your first chance at being a startup founder coincides with your first child, it’s difficult for either gender. But the reality is it is still even more challenging for woman. Woman will benefit from a longer runway.
Peter Thiel started the “20 Under 20″ program to encourage young, talented people to give entrepreneurship a shot. Perhaps somebody will champion a similar initiative to get more young women funded straight out of college to start to reverse the trend and help lead our next generation. Maybe I should do that! I wish I started on my own venture, younger.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
That’s a big question! As a coach and business founder, I’m always asking people why they feel they can’t do things, what are their limitations? Are the self-limiting beliefs, if so let’s address them. If they are gravity issues, (immoveable and fixed for them personally) I work with clients to come up with solutions around them and find the resources they need to move forward. Why wait for someone else to empower you to do anything? I would still be waiting for the Spearmint business plan to have miraculously appeared! When I pose the simple question “why not?” most clients have more irrational reasons than logical ones. People get stuck in the muck of obstacles. My coaching is all about goals, strategies, and solutions. The hardest thing about achieving a goal is setting one (clients are so sick of hearing me saying this, so I apologise). There is nothing as formidable as a thoroughly researched goal, and a plan to achieve it. Yes, we must encourage companies to offer support and programs, leadership training, and other resources to bring more woman up the ranks. But some of the most powerful and impressive young woman I have met have benefitted most from enlightened parents who encouraged and empowered them. I grew up in house full of woman and parents who did just that.
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
Because they can chart their own course. In a larger scope, they can have the flexibility they want. There is a greater risk (your name is on the door so to speak) but if you can hack it a greater reward. If you have a passion, why give it to someone else?
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
I am not sure what all the myths are out there, but I like to point out to others who may think from the outside that it looks like someone was an overnite sensation- well, they weren’t. Most success stories I hear from founders, entrepreneurs are filled with years of hard work, driven by an obsessive determination to bring their vision to life. And most efforts aren’t single handled –they had a great team, and perhaps some luck that they created for themselves.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
I don’t think everyone should be a founder. You must have enough drive, passion for your mission, vision, entrepreneurial spirit, relationship skills, and be willing to accept responsibility for the end result. I think successful founders accept large amounts of risk and have true confidence in their convictions. Not everyone finds this road appealing– it takes a whole team, in all positions to play a game of baseball; you just have to know where you like to stand on the field.
Based on your opinion and experience, what are the “Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder?” (Please share a story or example for each.)
I am not sure these are limited only to woman — but here they are:
- A vision you can share with others — You must have a goal and be able to communicate it to others in aid of support and business growth. Developing my business in the UK or Spearmint now would not have been possible without the support of the teams I work/worked with or clients who retained me. You need to communicate well to develop momentum
- Create a “Board of Directors” — you can’t be a founder without mentors, advisors and peers. Find the right people to help you and absolutely seek help when you need it. Be vulnerable with someone, perhaps a coach ☺! Everyone needs a safe sounding board to grow personally and professionally
- Share and listen! Most of the best decisions I’ve made, I shared my thoughts and concerns and listened to other perspectives. In sales you quickly understand the immense value of listening and it’s this key skill that makes a great coach. Find quality people to advise you and listen to what they have to say.
- Integrity — if something goes wrong under your command, don’t be afraid to own it. Integrity goes a long way. Create something you know works. Don’t let it out in the world until you are confident that what you are selling works. I would not — and I was asked- work with paying clients until I was done with my NYU certificate.
- Dress the part- I have maintained that all my best wins and successes have been when I dressed the part. Everyone has their ‘power outfit’ so choose yours, whatever it is that inspires confidence in yourself will inspire others to have confidence in you. Sorry, may be superficial but I have countless points of proof! Another simple but important truth: make sure to do what you can to take care of yourself as well- you can’t launch a rocket without fuel.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
In the first part of my career, I created a vibrant community for people to work, a way to support themselves and their families and opportunity to grow. What I do now as a coach helps people directly. They can become who they want to be and succeed in their professional lives.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Two things: a movement to help people be heard and treated fairly, to help people learn to listen. One of my favorite books is “Just Listen” by Dr Mark Goulston which outlines the importance of this skill and tools to improve it. I share it with many clients. People want to be acknowledged and heard! Second, Temet Nosce is Latin for “Know Thyself”. The key to finding a purpose and fulfillment in life begins with knowing and understanding yourself. An essential part is understanding what drives and motivates you as well as recognizing the limits of your own wisdom and understanding — a movement where we focus on learning and respect the knowledge of others could be a very good thing.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
First Barbara Corcoran. My daughter and I are obsessed with Shark Tank. I was well aware of her business success before I really admire the public persona she has created there. Fearless, smart and empathetic. We need more woman founders like her.
Malcom Gladwell- he is a brilliant writer, thinker and I greatly admire his work. I have read and listened to everything (Revisionist History is a must). I am always searching for new perspectives on culture, business and people and he always has fresh ideas.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Female Founders: Jill Schmidt On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
